Easy, Fast, and Yummy, My Three Requirements in a Salad

Dilemma:  It’s lunch time, and you feel guilty for the Brownie Bites you had for breakfast.  You need something to ease your conscience (and your waistband), but you really don’t want to cook. 

Solution:  Always, always have salad greens in your fridge.  Costco sells a big carton of organic mixed greens for, like, $3.50.  Keep one front and center, where you can look at it and feel all virtuous about your healthy eating habits.  Keep the Brownie Bites in the cabinet, because if you can’t see them, then the calories don’t count.

Put a big pile of greens on your plate.  Top it with some sort of lean protein, because otherwise you’re gonna be craving something artery-clogging within an hour.  Chicken, tuna, diced egg, chickpeas, black beans if you’re going for a southwest flair — use whatever you have on hand.  I used chicken.  I also sliced some sharp cheddar (because cheese makes my world go round, and because sharp means you can use less and still get plenty of flavor), and ripped it up and tossed it on the salad.  Crumbled feta would be fabulous, if you happen to have any. 

Now slice up the fruit of your choice and arrange it around the edge of the plate.  I used an orange, and in retrospect I have to tell you, chunking it up and tossing it in the salad would have been delicious.  If you use feta and fruit, I’d say a raspberry vinaigrette or poppyseed dressing would be perfect.  I actually used a fat-free bleu cheese that I had in the fridge, and it was pretty darn good.  Not as good as full-fat bleu cheese would have been, but remember the brownies?  Yeah.

All of this fruit-slicing and lettuce-tossing takes an exhausting three or four minutes.  You probably need a break about now.  Hey, how about a nice salad?

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